


Finish the Song

by Looks_Clear (chrysalisdreams)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Analog media as metaphor, Canon Divergence, Coda, Destiel - Freeform, Episode: s14e08 Byzantium, M/M, No Fluff, POV Dean Winchester, PWP, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 14:30:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17448770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/Looks_Clear
Summary: This kind of thing happened; people died, and the living needed to feel alive. Dean’s life had death in it every day. Those kind of deaths could be balanced out with driving fast or with comfort food. This loss… Dean needed something else. A body couldn’t hold so much…wantfor things to be different… without that want spilling out.If it spilled out as desire,Well.Spoilers for s14:8. Diverges from canon at the drinking scene, beginning with more booze that shown on screen.The title comes from something Jensen said inthis con video(at 11:10).





	Finish the Song

_You know how to get a song out of your head, right? Finish the song._

They emptied the cut crystal decanters and a few bottles in the bunker’s liquor cabinet, starting with the last of the very old Scotch left by the Men of Letters. Good bourbon, and cheaper bourbon followed, but they drew the line at an unexpected bottle of homemade moonshine that must have been left behind by one of the Apocalypse World refugees. Castiel went on a foray to Dean’s room and came back with two mostly full bottles, more bourbon and something only optimistically called whiskey that made Sam turn over his empty glass and declare he had had enough for the night. Sam bid his brother and Cas a good night, words tinged with lingering sadness, eased by camaraderie but of course not gone. Jack was gone, and the sadness there in his place would not be washed away with booze.

For a moment after Sam left, Dean, angled back in his chair, contemplated his own emptied glass, as if he might call it a night as well. He leaned forward and set his glass against the polished table surface, but upright, and his fingers kept a light grip on it. Cas tipped the full bottle toward Dean’s glass, but waited to pour. Dean made a beckoning gesture with his empty hand, and his gaze slid up to meet Castiel’s eyes while his glass filled.

_“Tonight,”_ Dean had said, _“we get loaded.”_ But Dean couldn't get properly drunk anymore. With as much as he'd consumed, at best he had a little insulation from his feelings, a haze muffling his thoughts. Alcohol marinated some of the tension out of his shoulders. It was about as much as he could expect from hard drinking.

Cas's robust tolerance meant that he was drinking directly out of the whiskey bottle to catch up to Dean. Seventy proof, and it might have been a nougat candy bar for all it affected the angel. Still, Cas seemed relaxed. He had gotten into the spirit even if the spirits hadn't been enough to defeat the constitution of a celestial being. They had all been laughing, smiling, sharing memories of Jack. Coming up with stories to keep the mood warm. Keeping the talk flowing.

Sam took the need for a conversation out of the room with him. The mood took a subtle shift after Sam left. Dean nursed his liquor, in no rush to empty the glass in hand. Cas sipped from the bottle, when he wasn't turning it in his hands. He started at the label, or he gazed blankly across the room. Or he made eye contact with Dean, holding it for a moment, before finding a reason to look away.

Dean wasn't staring. But it seemed that whenever his eyes turned toward Cas, Cas's eyes would turn towards Dean, their gazes inevitably locking. If Dean quirked a smile, a small smile would rise up on Cas's lips, too. There was enough haze between Dean and his thoughts that he didn't shove them down, the way he usually did. They tumbled around in his mind, like lyrics of a familiar song.

But just one line. One line he never got past.

It seemed like it had always been between them, the silent conversation that they had started somewhere between the words, spoken aloud, of their first meeting on earth. Because even though he hadn’t wanted to face it, Dean had clear and detailed memory of his time in hell, including the blinding moment a white-hot hand grasped his shoulder and pulled him away from the soul Dean had been torturing.

There had been too much to say between Dean and Castiel from the very beginning. Too much for words to contain. Over the years, Cas had started to learn the words for some of it. And Dean, during the times when their friendship was on steady ground, had told Cas things that he didn’t confide in anyone else, except maybe Sam, and some things he hadn’t even told Sam. Not always big things, or Lifetime Original Movie touchy-feely stuff. A lot of it was about how much he loved stupid shit, like Japanese cartoons even when they didn’t have tentacles and titties, or how one of the things he liked most about the hunter’s life was traveling to different places, seeing how other people lived.

All that stuff was there, in the silent conversation, along with a lot more that couldn’t find a vessel in words. Dean had his lips on his glass when their eyes locked again. Cas had just put his mouth to the mouth of the bottle. There was heat moving down Dean’s chest that wasn’t the whiskey. Cas couldn’t be aware of how suggestive it was, his eyes meeting Dean’s obliquely because his posture was slightly turned away from Dean, coquettish because those deep blue irises were hidden by dense eyelashes, and all the while, his lips and tongue worked against the bottle's mouth. Dean directed his eyes to his glass again. He could picture Cas’s lips sliding off the bottle as he heard him finish and set the bottle down on the table.

Cas got up from his chair. He lingered a moment before heading toward the door. As he took the step past Dean, he put his hand on Dean’s shoulder, the quick squeeze made more casual by a pat as his stride took him away.

Dean had a moment, where he could have called out a last question to Cas, turned the mood dark, and sat in it alone for the rest of the night. Letting the record in his head skip again, a song repeating the same line, unable to go forward. Letting the vortex of another bleak night swallow him up.

He rose from his seat, carefully slid the chair back toward the table, and followed Cas through the doorway.

In the hallway, the thought flashed through his head that he could keep on walking past Cas’s room door and continue on to his own room. He could lie there, alone on his bed, unable to sleep. Headphones on, songs he knew note for note blaring, in the chance that they could drown out everything else.

He stopped at Cas’s room. He knocked at the door, a quiet tap-tap-tap, then turned the knob and let himself in.

This kind of thing happened; people died, and the living needed to feel alive. Dean’s life had death in it every day. Those kind of deaths could be balanced out with driving fast or with comfort food. Losing the kid… Dean needed something else. A body couldn’t hold so much… _want_ for things to be different… without that want spilling out.

If it spilled out as desire,

Well.

Cas had been standing at the little table beside his bed. Cas kept the room dim, the only light a soft gold from the incandescent bedside lamp. He was surprised by Dean walking through his bedroom door. Dean could see the question in Cas’s expression. Dean closed the door behind himself, and Cas blinked confusion at the sound of the lock turning. His eyes went to the closed door, and then to Dean. “Dean?” he questioned.

Dean closed the distance between them with a saunter. His long strides were slow with false ease and manufactured confidence. In truth, he was terrified.

Cas’s voice was a little hushed when he asked, “Why are you here?” Dean could see his mind working, taking in the lack of personal space. It was all there, in the silent conversation. Dean let his gaze fall to somewhere past Cas’s left shoulder. He took a step in.

“I don’t know,” he answered. His voice came out whiskey gruff, pitched low.

Cas fidgeted. “You told me, once,” he said, but ran out of breath, and tried again. “When humans want something very badly, they lie.”

Dean was standing too close to Cas to mean anything but what he meant. He leaned in, his head dropping until his forehead almost touched Cas’s forehead. “Yeah,” Dean answered, and now the growl in his voice revealed the heaviness of his breaths, how unsteady they came. “That’s right.” He put his hands on the curves of Cas’s shoulders. “I did.”

In his head, he shouted at himself. _Do it, you coward._

Cas, struggling to form words, wet his lips and took a shallow breath. “Are you...” he asked slowly, “telling a lie now, De--”

Dean cut him off before Cas could finish, by smoothly drawing Cas toward him and landing his mouth squarely on Castiel’s. With his tongue, he coaxed Cas’s mouth open. The kiss was heavy and wet, hard and forceful, slippery. A little awkward, too, corrections needed for how they fit together, and for teeth. But reciprocated. Reciprocated fully by Cas with the kind of hunger for him that Dean had guiltily fantasized about.

They had a lot of spit between them. The flavor of bourbon in Cas’s warm mouth was the most intoxicating thing Dean had tasted all night. They parted lips only to let in a little air, for Dean to breath Cas in.

Dean’s hands moved in practiced patterns. Finding their way into Cas’s clothes, pulling his shirt up out of his suit slacks, they sought out contact with bare skin. Dean moved his hands up Cas’s back while kissing Cas. Strong back and shoulder muscles flexed as Cas shed his trench coat. When his suit jacket joined the coat on the floor, Cas put his arms around Dean in an embrace. Mimicking Dean, he slid his hands under Dean’s flannel.

Feeling Cas’s grasp on the shirt closest to Dean’s body, Dean decided they were both still wearing too much clothing. He nudged Cas down onto the bed, breaking away from their long kiss and turning it into repeating dips down to Cas’s hungry mouth. Dean set his fingers to the task of unbuttoning Cas’s shirt.

The expression on Cas’s face was full of trust, but his eyes looked as frightened by the boundary between them blurring away as Dean felt. He helped get the rest of his buttons open, bottom to top, and then tugged at Dean’s shirts even as Dean pulled them off himself, over his head. Boots were kicked off to the floor. Dean's had laces; he would have to get his off later.

“I’m so fucking drunk,” Dean murmured against Cas’s lips. His left hand cradled Cas’s head, his right arm braced his weight so that he could climb onto the bed and be above Cas.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Cas said. His voice was husky. Timid. Almost apologetic, not that he had anything to apologize for. They made eye contact, and it was as good as a confession. Dean was lying. Cas knew and was letting him lie, if that’s what Dean needed.

With a woman Dean would have guided her legs up around him, kind of a way to make sure she was OK with what was going down, giving his lover a chance to slow him down before they cruised far past shirtlessness. He kneeled with one knee on either side of Cas’s leg. With Cas he was going to need different moves.

Cas didn’t wait for Dean to figure out what those would be. He put an arm around Dean’s waist and lifted himself up enough to kiss Dean’s collarbone, then continue kissing downward, his eyes closed. He wriggled down the bed so that he could kiss Dean’s chest above his heart.

Dean slid down, himself, so that they were on the same level again. He rolled onto the bed’s vacant space and lay on his side. He unbuttoned his jeans and kissed Cas. While they kissed, Dean took Cas’s right hand and steered it into his open fly. Cas pushed his hand in deeply. The feel of Cas’s fingers on the other side of Dean’s boxer briefs drove a sound out of Dean. He was mortified that it sounded more like a whimper than a moan. “Dammit. I need you,” Dean said, muffled against Cas’s shoulder.

“I’m right here, Dean,” Cas replied. He pressed a lingering kiss against Dean’s temple. “I need you, too.” His hand wriggled in the tight space. Dean’s jeans were tight and sharply getting tighter at the crotch. Cas tugged at the waistband with his other hand.

Looking into Cas’s eyes, Dean ran his thumb over Cas’s lips. The roughness of Cas’s unshaved cheek against his palm aroused Dean more. He dipped his thumb between Cas’s lips; Cas closed his lips over it. He tongued the tip of Dean’s thumb and sucked. His eyelids lowered; his brow furrowed with either concentration or lack of confidence, Dean was unsure which.

He freed Cas’s hand so that his own hands were free to pull off both jeans and briefs. The damn boots were still in the way, so he sat up. Pointer finger raised, he indicated a need to pause. He was grumpy about it, but he had to loosen his laces to get the heavy work boots off. Cas used the opportunity to remove his suit pants.

“Should I light some candles…?” Cas asked with uncertainty.

Dean tugged off a boot. “Why the hell for?” he asked. Sorry for the misdirected harshness, he added, softer, “We're fine.”

“Oh.” Cas’s single syllable response was almost too quiet to be heard. Dean wondered how he had managed to be an asshole to Cas again at the worst possible time.

Cas had discarded his boxers and was sitting naked on the bed. Dean felt his skin flush all the way down to his nipples; he wondered if he looked as lobster red as the blush felt. He looked at the other boot as he pulled it off, along with his socks. “Do you want candles?” he asked.

Cas folded down the sheet and tucked his legs in. “No. The reaper that possessed April liked a lot of candles in the room.”

Dean almost gave up. We wished Cas hadn't brought up the reaper that had tricked, tortured, and stabbed Cas. “C'mere,” he said instead, and he rolled back down, pulling Cas toward him again, into an embrace. He pushed the sheets aside until he was under them, too.

This time, Cas kissed him first. He almost seemed to know what he was doing, too. The way his hands slid between their bodies and his fingers teased at Dean’s nipples -- Cas had to have learned that from somewhere.

Shit! Every little thing was distracting Dean. Giving him an excuse not to do anything, but it wasn’t like he could just stop. He didn’t want to stop. He definitely didn’t want to stop. He got his jeans off his hips and then off completely. Not the most graceful disrobing, but he was being careful not to kick Cas anywhere delicate while at the same time keeping as much contact between their bodies as he could. The bedsheets piled up at the foot of the bed.

His hard-on touched Cas’s cock and it was like a flame had been dropped onto poured gasoline, the way his lust flared into a blaze. He took hold of one of Cas’s hands again and put it where he wanted it. With his own hand over Cas’s hand, Dean closed Cas’s palm and fingers into a grip. Cas got the gist and started stroking Dean, pace guided by Dean’s covering hand.

Once the rhythm was established, Dean got his free hand onto Cas’s crotch, rubbed his palm against Cas’s cock, and coaxed him hard. Cas gave Dean’s nipple a break and concentrated on stroking and massaging Dean at the pace and pressure Dean wanted. Dean knew it was selfish, but feeling Cas working him toward and orgasm was mind blowing. The intimacy of showing him how he liked it, together with it being  _Cas’s hand_ stroking him, was _so good_.

And meanwhile, it was Cas’s mouth kissing his chin, exhaling heavily against Dean’s neck. It was Cas’s firm ass under Dean’s hand when Dean sent his touch wandering from Cas’s erection. Dean ran light fingertips over everywhere he could reach. Every time Cas squirmed, or made a low, helpless sound in his throat, it shot a pulse through Dean’s core that nearly put him over the edge.

Not quite over, though. He gently stopped Cas’s stroking. He positioned them both, getting Cas flat onto his back so that Dean could be more or less above him, and while they kissed, Dean got to work making Cas climax first.

Cas was unguarded and receptive to Dean’s ministrations. He probably never touched himself, so he hadn’t practiced drawing the pleasure out as long as possible before coming. Dean watched Cas through lidded eyes, all the while dropping small, delicate kisses on his mouth, soft enough not to take the focus away from the hand-job Dean gave him. Cas started to squirm a lot, a sign that he was almost there. As soon as Cas started to orgasm, Dean took himself in hand so that he could finish just a few seconds behind.

The feel of Cas’s body-hot come fountaining against Dean’s belly finished Dean off. He spilled all over his lover with a growl. For a moment, he had spots in his vision and couldn’t do anything but brace himself, panting, over Cas. Then he slowly sank down and rolled onto his back.

He grinned to himself. He pushed himself up on one arm and grinned at Cas. Cas smiled back with his rueful little smile and a tilt of his head.

He directed his gaze to the bedroom ceiling. “That’s not how they do it in the movies,” he contemplated.

Dean wasn’t the type to do a post-game analysis, but he had to ask. “You’ve picked up a few things, somewhere.”

Cas shrugged. He looked at himself. A small frown on his face, he looked around a moment before finally turning on to his front. “Among the library of knowledge Metatron put in my head was an abundance of romance novels.” He tapped his temple with a finger. He crossed his arms and rested his chin on their shelf. “Many contain some fairly explicit scenes,” he explained.

Dean scooted closer so that he could put his arm over Cas. He wanted to apologize for the wet spot. Instead, he found himself kissing Cas again. Actually kissing him, not thinking about it and making himself think of something else.

He wouldn’t be ready to do anything more, again, for a while yet. So with a final kiss, he settled himself at rest beside Cas, sheets pulled up over them together. Cas didn’t say anything more, and Dean didn’t feel the need to make conversation.

Some time later, Cas asked, “Will you sleep here? I can turn off the light, if you want.”

Dean answered, “I should probably sleep in my own bed.” He paused before adding, “Since you don't sleep.”

“You're right,” Cas said, but he didn't look at Dean, and he seemed sad. Resigned. “I hoped,” he said, with a brighter lilt, “that we could…” He gave Dean an insinuating glance. “Go again?”

“Hm.” Dean smirked. “Yes we can.”

There was no more talking, after that. They took their time, and when they were done, Dean figured he needed a shower before he tried to get some sleep in what was left of the night. He sat on the side of the bed to get dressed. Cas sat on top of the mattress with his legs folded under the sheets, in no hurry to dress. He reached out and rubbed Dean's back, an affectionate touch.

Dean pulled on his boots without lacing them up. “Listen, Cas,” he started. It sounded too much like the little speech he sometimes gave to hook-ups. He turned around toward Cas and started again. “I don't know right now, what happens after this.” He looked down at his hands, frowning. “It feels damn good to be with you.” He nodded to himself. He looked up to meet Cas's eyes.

“I understand, Dean,” Cas replied softly. “This kind of thing, this aspect to our relationship -- it isn't the most important priority right now.”

“OK,” Dean agreed. He took a minute more before gathering himself to leave.

Before he could get up from the bed, though, before he could turn away from Cas, Cas reached out and took hold of Dean's shirt front with both hands. “But if you think I'm letting you end this as a one night stand,” he said, “you're out of your mind.”

_ _ _


End file.
